Massage Chair Industry Update Video & Transcripts – 06/04/12

Below is the video and transcripts to my most recent Massage Chair Industry Update video, which I recorded on June 4, 2012. I will begin posting each of these YouTube videos (and all of my videos, for that matter) on this blog along with the transcripts.

Alan: Hi, this is Dr. Alan Weidner from ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com‘ with our bi-weekly massage chair industry and ‘Massage-Chair-Relief’ store update. Today is June 4th, and we’ve got a few things to go over today, and of course, as always, I always begin with back-order status of chairs.

[SCREEN TEXT: Back Order Update]

And of course, the Inada Sogno is back-ordered again. This time, we are back-ordered until June 11th on the ‘Dark Brown’, the ‘Chocolate’ and the ‘Crème’. The ‘Red’ is back-ordered until the 13th , so the back order isn’t too far away, it’s just another week, but back-ordered nonetheless. The Osaki 7000 ‘Ivory’, as I mentioned last time, is back-ordered. They have a shipment coming in this week, but they’re all spoken for. The next shipment will be in in about 5 to 6 weeks, and apparently the ‘Taupe’ is back-ordered now as well, so we have to wait until that 5 or 6-week period come, that 5 , 6-week period comes again before we have ‘Ivory’ or ‘Taupe’ in stock. So, well, what’s new? I found out today that the ‘Butter’ color of the Human Touch 5040 massage chair has now been discontinued.

[SCREEN TEXT: Discontinued]

Alan: I know this because I had an order placed over the weekend for that color and I sent in my order this morning and I was notified that ‘Butter’ was discontinued. So, if you’re interested in that, we’ve taken that color off of our website, but if ‘Butter’ is a color you’re interested in, don’t look for it in the HT 5040. I completed my interviews with Cliff Levin from Inada USA. I broke up the interview, which was a 45-minute interview, in to 3 smaller segments, and they’ve all posted on our YouTube channel, which is, ‘YouTube.com/MassageChairRelief’, but I’ve also this last week, put up all 3 of those segments, with transcripts, on our blog.

[SCREEN TEXT: (Video and Transcripts)]

Alan: So you can go to ‘Massage-Chair-Relief.com/Blog’, and you can go check out the transcripts if you’d rather read the interviews than sit and watch us talk. I might add that the most common words in my vocabulary during that interview are ‘Yeah’, ‘Mm-hmm’ and ‘Right’ and that’s about all I had to offer [laughs] for much of the interview when Cliff was talking, but it’s a great interview, good information about Inada chairs, and particularly the Inada Sogno, so go and enjoy. Also, other recent blog posts that I’ve posted include a recent question from a massage chair shopper asking about the difference between the Panasonic MA70 and the Inada Sogno Dreamwave chair. They’re close in price, so I get a lot of people inquiring about them and how they compare.

[SCREEN TEXT: Dreamwave]

Alan: I’ve written a few articles in the blog about the MA70, and even one extensive article answering another shopper’s questions about the specific differences between the MA70 and the Inada Sogno. Well, this fellow asks some other particular questions that I never covered in that first article, so I wrote about it. So, have a look at that article if you’re interested in either one of those chairs. I also had an article about the armrests in the Inada Sogno. Some people are a little confused by it, and how the arms are supposed to fit in there, a couple of things, I might mention, the Inada Sogno armrests, by default, are quite loose. They’re not anchored on to the chair, the reason for that is you have full arm massage on the arm here, and airbags are on either side. If that inflates on either side of your arm, it’s going to crush you because, if the armrests don’t give. And so Sogno is intelligent enough to create a, kind of a fall-away armrest, so it can expand with the armrest inflation. So, that is a question that a lot of people, well not a lot, but a few people ask about, and I discuss that on that blog post. I also would like you to know that we have begun a video series on our YouTube channel for the HT 7120 massage chair, and I believe we’ve got 2 or 3 videos up already.

SCREEN TEXT: Osaki OS-7000]

Alan: And we’ve also begun a series of videos for the Osaki OS-7000, which has become our second most popular chair behind the Inada Sogno. Even though the Inada Sogno’s still $7800 dollars, it outsells all other chairs, but the Osaki 7000 is fast becoming the second most popular chair, and but that’s the one that’s always on back order. Duh, and now we know why it’s on back order, being such a popular chair. But you can go on our YouTube channel, again, ‘YouTube.com/Massage-Chair-Relief‘, or go to our website and go to the particular product pages for those chairs, and on the ‘Extra Images’ section on that page, you can see a little image that says ‘Video’, click on that, and that will bring you up to our YouTube, or bring up the first YouTube video, and at the bottom of that it will say ‘Playlist’, click on that and it will show you all the videos that we have up. And I’m adding, chairs, or videos every week, so stay tuned for that. Now, the last thing I want to talk about, oh, we have Father’s Day coming up, that’s the second last thing I’m going to talk about. Father’s Day is coming up on the 17th of June, we have some specials on, for people that call in to the showroom, I can’t advertise them on my website, because I’m not allowed to discount chairs on the website, but we do have them in our showroom.

[SCREEN TEXT: 801-651-2026]

Alan: Or you can call me personally at 801-651-2026.

[SCREEN TEXT: 801-417-8240]

Alan: Or call our showroom at 801-417-8240, and we can talk about Father’s Day specials. If you’re going to get a chair for Father’s Day, order now. Orders, I’ve been up lately, and I suspect it’s because of the Father’s Day rush, just like it was before Christmas or before Black Friday. So, give me a call and we can talk to you about the specials that we have, and you can get your chair ordered, and in time, delivered in time for Father’s Day. But the last thing I wanted to talk about was this Sanyo hassle that I’ve been having with a customer who ordered a chair from me. She received, now as you know Sanyo was bought out by Panasonic a couple of years ago.

[SCREEN TEXT: Customer Support Nightmare]

Alan: But it’s taken a while for it to transition over to the Panasonic system, or the Panasonic support structure, well, we’ve not had any real customer support issues to deal with directly, regarding any Sanyo chairs since that takeover has occurred, or I should say, not since the the takeover has occurred, but since Panasonic has begun to assume the Sanyo massage chair customer support calls. Well, I had a customer that ordered a Sanyo 7700, wonderful chair, made in Japan still, may some day be made in China some day soon, because all the other Panasonic chairs have been outsourced to China, but there was a little plate on one side of the chair, it’s a cosmetic plate, a little plastic plate, it costs $38 dollars I guess, for a new one, and that was broken on this customer’s chair. So. She called the number that we had for Sanyo customer support, and was told that I needed to contact Sanyo. Well, I contacted Sanyo, and I was given such a run-around. Actually, I contacted Panasonic, the number was a Panasonic number, I called, I was referred to another number, to another number, back to the previous number that I had, then another number and another number, until finally, after about a week of on-and-off calling, because I can’t sit on the phone for 2 hours at a time, calling for this customer support. Finally got through to a department that claimed to be Sanyo customer support, so I said ‘Well, I have a customer, they have a brand new chair, and they need support, is it covered by the warranty?’ No, [laughs] so they’re, support was, the chair wasn’t even covered by warranty at this juncture, and also, there had been no Sanyo support centers, you know, authorized support centers that had switched over to the Panasonic network. So, there’s no support, for a Panasonic or sorry a Sanyo massage chair, and I was dumbfounded. And so, needless to say, I was chapped and I ended up buying this part for my customer and having it shipped, now it’s still being shipped, I think it’s 7 to 10 days shipping, which is another mind-boggling thing. It’s a little piece, fits in a small package, should be able to get there in 2 to 3 days, they live in Washington, well no, it’s a 7 to 10 business day shipping, so a couple of weeks. Well, I’ve not been happy with that at all, and I was quite upset, of course, disturbed that I had to pay for a part that should be covered under warranty. But, I just thought I would tell you about that. I’ve written my whole story of this experience on my blog, so if you’d like to read it and get some laughs, because to be honest, as I wrote about it, and it’s about a 7, 800-word article, the more I wrote about it, the funnier it became to me, and the funnier my text became, because I couldn’t believe that I’d been through this. And, for a chair that has in the past, been a reputable chair, and it still is a well-made chair, don’t get me wrong, and you may never need to use customer support, but if you have a Sanyo 7700, or any other Sanyo massage chair, buyer beware, my heavens, man, and we had a client in Minnesota that bought a Sanyo, and wanted an extended warranty, so he was eager to see what the results of my experience was with Sanyo. Well, I gave him the number that I had called, finally reached, and gave him that number. And he said, that when he called, they, he needed to buy an extended warranty, they didn’t even have an extended warranty to offer him. And so, what he said, and I’ll use his words, he said ‘Panasonic is slowly correcting their Sanyo takeover issues, though I’ve found it does little good to be too kind with them. I’m getting much more response by being forceful and demanding, in other words, I can be a little more of a jerk than I normally am’. [laughs] And so, I guess if you want something for your Sanyo chair, you want some support, don’t be nice like I was, raise a bit of a stink, and you should be able to get the kind of support that you need. And knock on wood, it should be OK, but my goodness gracious, the fiasco I went through to get this bloody number to finally be able to call, and speak to someone that worked under the auspices of Sanyo customer support was, I felt like I had just discovered the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but even then the results weren’t all that great. So, buyer beware, the Sanyo’s a great chair, but you might have some customer support issues. Be demanding, be a little unkind, be impatient, and it sounds like they will respond to you eventually. Well, that is pretty much it for our review this week, our massage chair update and review. If you have any questions, feel free to call me, I’m always available to talk about chairs, about the industry, about your chair if you have one, or another chair that we don’t care that you haven’t heard about, you’re not sure about. I’m pretty well immersed in the industry, and I think I can help you out, and if I can’t, I can find someone that can. So, give us a call at 888-259-5380.

Alan: Visit our website at ‘www.Massage-Chair-Relief.com’, visit our YouTube channel, the address of which I’ve given 2 times already in this video. You can visit us on Facebook at Massage-Chair-Relief, or I’m sorry, not Massage-Chair-Relief, ‘Facebook.com/Massage.Chair.Relief’, or Twitter, at ‘Twitter.com/MassageChairs’. So, if you can’t remember all that, don’t worry about it, it should be written above here in text, and you can check them out any time you’d like, but feel free to get a hold of us. We appreciate you’re spending time with me here today, and I hope this has helped out in some way. We’ll see you in 2 weeks. Bye bye.

President of Massage Chair Relief, Dr. Weidner is a leading expert in the massage chair industry. His articles, videos, interviews, website, and industry updates have become the resources of choice for those researching which massage chair is best for them.